Superspreader!

Many of you – meaning Iris Minge of Lake Coppasquat, New Jersey – have reached out to me, Pinky Tourette, about how Thee Tourettes are faring through the pandemic. On behalf of the girls I want to thank each and every one of you, Iris, for your concern and for the lovely drawing you sent of Farrah Fawcett or Albert Einstein, I’m not sure which. Next time may I suggest you simply send money.

The truth is, it has been enormously difficult for Thee Tourettes, who since birth have known no life but the road, to sequester themselves inside and refrain from careening between furious live shows in arenas and concert halls from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. But they’ve managed, thank you very much.

In fact, during this forced break from the road, they’ve buckled down and put their radiant heads together to work on what some (me) are already calling their magnum opus, their pièce de résistance, their Mona Lisa and Taj Mahal and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Citizen Kane and Hamlet and Moby Dick all rolled into one, one Claude Hooper Bukowski.

The sprawling epic, a punk funk metal disco rhythm & trash rock opera tracing the entire arc of the coronavirus through the dark tunnel of 2020, is up to 257 songs so far. Entitled “Superspreader,” it follows the adventures of Timmy Stardust, a hardcore video gaming enthusiast who slaves away at a dreary day-job making home deliveries for a faceless global e-commerce organization called Abaddon.

As the pandemic hits, Timmy finds himself classified an essential worker (cue song: “I’m the Hypotenuse in Your Triangle Shirtwaist”), meaning he has to work twice as hard for the same pay while risking his life daily with zero protection from his cackling, corpulent bosses Tarr and Fether, who place wagers on which worker will collapse next. (“Dying for Toilet Paper”)

Timmy is soon dispatched by a scheming Fether to carry an unstable radioactive isotope into a remote mountainous area cloaked in orange smoke from nearby wildfires. There he accidentally stumbles across a group of drunken hillbillies named Pluto, Mars, and Papa Jupiter struggling to topple a mysterious obelisk. (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alt-Right”) The trio immediately turn their wrath on Timmy, beating him with his own delivery packages of yoga pants, Fenty makeup, and industrial-sized bags of Twizzlers, clawing open the isotope and unleashing a blinding green light – just as Murder Hornets attack. (“Is it 2021 Yet?”)

At this point, space aliens summoned to the location by the threat to their obelisk beam everyone aboard their saucer for proctology practice. (“Colonoscopy Domine”)

Timmy eventually awakens, crouched naked amidst lightning bolts next to a garbage truck, and incidentally deaf, dumb, and blind. Through various plot machinations it is revealed that by playing Super Smash Bros. he is now capable of miraculously erasing the virus from anyone watching, and he is summarily elevated to an esports megacelebrity. (“All in All it’s Just Another Brick in the Rise and Fall of Timmy Stardust Superstar Lies Down on Broadway”)

I don’t want to ruin the rest of the story by revealing any more, but suffice to say there’s danger, excitement, intrigue, sex, politics, and comedy mixed with generous dollops of inertia and extreme tedium. The sisters are already fielding calls from major theatrical producers who smell a moneymaker that’ll make “Hamilton” look like “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” if only they can figure out how to keep audiences in their seats for the full 38-hour length of the show.

Fans can expect a box set complete with copious extras, including posters, buttons, a lyric sheet, a 200-page, richly-illustrated bio of Timmy Stardust, iron-on patches, and a set of rainbow-colored shoelaces. (What can I say; we got a deal on shoelaces. Don’t argue. They’re free.)

Eventually, once the current crisis has passed, the show will hit the road, with Thee Tourettes planning a massive Superspreader tour around the globe. International economists (me) are already predicting it will bolster the economy of every city, town, village, and hamlet through which the sprawling tour caravan passes.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t go the same route as their last magnum opus, the scrapped Titanic musical “Hold the Ice.”